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I hat machine, which grew from roots formed during Virginia’s Reconstruction, was a marvel of political endurance under the tutelage of Harry Byrd Sr. But it was about to crumble.
And with it sank the statewide dominance of the Democrats.
Although Byrd politics held on for years after many of the solid southern political machines disappeared, Virginia was changing. Slowly, but surely, the face of politics was taking on a new look.
The election of political leaders, which had been carefully controlled by the few, was now placed in the hands of the many.
V.O. Key, in his book Southern Politics, published in 1949, suggested that Mississippi, when compared to Virginia, was a “hotbed of democracy.”
That changed in the 1960s.
The poll tax was eliminated, as was the literacy test. And the 1965 Voting Rights Act effectively created a new electorate.
“Those changes eventually put hundreds of thousands of new voters on the rolls in Virginia, including significant numbers of blacks, had been virtually disenfranchised until
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